CHAIR ROBERT WILCOX - For those of you who are relatively new to the Faculty Senate, a reminder that a sheet will be circulated that you need to initial to indicate your attendance here to keep our records straight. Also, particularly if it ever comes to voting on anything, we need the senators in these two middle sections and non-senators to the outside. I am not sure today we will have some votes. Well we will have some votes for the election. We prefer that the senators sit in the middle.

II. Correction and Approval of Minutes.

CHAIR WILCOX - The first item of business is the correction and approval of the minutes of the September 6th meeting. Are there any corrections to the minutes as published. There being none, is there a motion that they be approved? It is moved and seconded. All in favor of the minutes as printed say aye. Opposed. The minutes stand approved.

III. Reports of Officers.

CHAIR WILCOX - Reports of Officers - President Palms.

PRESIDENT PALMS:

Good afternoon. First of all I want to acknowledge the faculty's efforts in dealing with our students since the events of September 11, including the time that you have given them in the classroom, when they have asked for discussions, and the time that you have spent outside the classroom counseling them, particularly our international students. This afternoon there is an annual reception at the President's house for the international students. There has been a mixed reaction to this among students, especially those students from the Middle East. Some students have been asked by their parents to come home, and they have done so. At this time of concern particularly with the parents we have accommodated those desires, and you have been cooperative in allowing these students to withdraw at this time. They have the intention to come back.

These events have made even more fitting some of events planned to occur here in October as part of the Bicentennial celebration. International spiritual leaders and scholars will come here for a three-day ecumenical conference exploring contemplative spirituality of Christianity and Islam. No better opportunity to be doing this. There will be a variety of presentations and panel discussions to be held in Gambrell Hall auditorium and Rutledge College chapel from October 18-20. Then his Holiness the Dalai Lama has arranged for two monks from his monastery to visit our campus from October 22 to 26, and they will present lectures on compassion and complete a spiritual paintings as well. They will also spend five days in the Russell House creating a sacred sand mandala of the Buddha of Infinite Compassion. I hope you will encourage your students to attend these events. In response to the tragedies of September 11, we are also getting letters of sympathy from university presidents and rectors from around the world, including Kuwait University as well as University of Hamburg.

You already has some preliminary reports on the outstanding freshman class. Now it is more official. The average SAT of the baccalaureate students in the freshmen class is 1120. The average SAT for Honors College students is 1374, and 78 percent of the class, 2,500 students, are South Carolinians. Twenty-three percent of those students who scored above 1200 are here, and 29 percent of South Carolina students who have scored above 1400 are at the University of South Carolina. Overall on all of our campuses, 88 percent of our students are from South Carolina.

I want to congratulate you for an outstanding year of research. You've seen the coverage in the newspaper. In 1990, we were able to receive about $45 million of research funding and this past year it is $123 million. I cannot tell you how proud this University should be of its faculty for writing that many proposals, conducting the research, and continuing to uphold your responsibilities of teaching as well as advising, etc. With that in mind the University has risen 15 places since 1990 to 88 in the rankings of the National Science Foundation, the most highly respected measure of university research programs.

You know I talked about this survey and the rankings by the University of Florida's Lombardi Program. [Lombardi is the previous president.] They use nine measurements that are, I think, the most appropriate gauges for a research university: total research, federal research, endowed assets, annual giving, national academy members, faculty awards, doctorates granted, post-doctoral appointments and SAT scores. We do quite well in its listing. I believe that the report is available in the Provost's office. Those who want to look at it can look into it in more detail.

We are off to a good start. I know that many of you have appeared at the public hearings of the Strategic Directions Initiative Committee. I want to tell you that all of us in the administration know what a difficult task this is. The models for higher education in our lifetime have always used increasesin the number of students and the total resourceseven when economic dips and budget shortfalls were factored in. We are in fairly new territory, with the economic situation and the budget shortfalls of a magnitude we have not experienced. This is a really, really difficult task for higher education to be able to downsize to that degree. We still hope that it will not be required of us, but in the meantime those of us in the administration appreciate your participation in this effort and your patience with it. Whatever is decided for the University must be collectively decided. Only in this way can we implement the recommendations of the committee and possess the conviction and enthusiasm necessary to work through the difficulties that may be ahead of us. So, I thank Jerry and this committee for their work so far. They have spent endless hours listening, reading reports and trying to decide what particular directions that the University ought to take in the near future and over the long term.

That's my report. I will be glad to answer any questions.

CHAIR WILCOX - Are there any questions for the president? If not, Provost Odom.

PROVOST ODOM:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me just take up where the president left off and talk just a moment about the Strategic Directions and Initiatives Committee. As I have told you before we are meeting every Tuesday and Thursday - on Tuesdays from 3:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. and on Thursdays from 3:30 until 7:30 p.m. Last night we had our third public meeting. These have gone very well. We had one in Belk Auditorium, one here in this room, and last night's meeting was in Longstreet Theatre. We have had good participation, good suggestions, a lot of questions about what we are doing and where we are going. Because we have had some people who clearly have to teach when we are having these - all the meetings have been from 5:30 to 7:00 on Tuesdays - I am going to have at least one more meeting and that meeting will be on October 18th. I hope that you will urge your colleagues to attend and I hope that you will attend. This meeting will be from noon until 1:30. It will be in the Russell House theatre and I will get out some publicity on that and will also urge students to attend and take part.

We will hope to have presentations by deans and vice presidents finished by the end of this month and then we will spend the month of November in very serious discussions about the information that we have received, any suggestions that we have received, questions, etc. We hope to have a report to the president by mid-December.

Then he will look at the recommendations that were made. We also, of course, will forward a copy of the report to the Chair of the Faculty Senate. The Faculty will have that as well.

I would like to publicly thank the members of the committee. They have already shown extreme dedication and commitment to what we are about. It is a very serious task. The committee has, in fact, shown that they are very serious about what they are trying to accomplish. Let me just urge you again, if you are interested, and have any input or suggestions we do have a web site with access from the Provost's homepage. We would be happy to have your input that way. We would be happy to - any member of the committee would be happy to hear from you either personally or through one of these public meetings. Again I would just tell you that I don't think yet that we have had

any student participation that I would like to have. That is why we are trying to have this next meeting at the Russell House theatre and will urge their participation.

Just one other small thing I wanted to tell you. As part of our SACS reaccreditation study as you know we were looking at information technology across the campus. In conversations with Dan Barron about that self-study as well as conversations with Fred Roper who is dean of the College of Library and Information Science, I formed a task force on what was termed "informatics". I simply asked them to look at the possibilities that might exist for a fairly broad ranging major and/or minor in information technology that we could offer to our students. As we all know information technology is pervasive on this campus from media arts on one side of the campus to computer science and engineering on the other side to journalism. There are just so many uses of information technology and how our students benefit that I asked this task force to consider all of the ramifications of academic courses and whether we could have a major or a minor without introducing too much more. That committee had been meeting at least the second half of last year and I met with the chair Fred Roper who was willing to chair this committee. He and I had a long meeting at the beginning of this academic year and in light of the budget considerations and some other considerations, I met with the task force early last week. We talked about suspending its deliberations for the time being until we see exactly where we are with the budget with this Strategic Directions and Initiatives Committee report. Then I would like for them to meet and begin their deliberations again. They will issue an interim report to me and then I will meet with them again as soon as we decide to start the deliberations again, but I did want the senate to know that that task force has had its operations suspended for the time being. That completes my report and I will be glad to answer any questions.

CHAIR WILCOX - From time to time I would like the senate to get some information on subjects that have not necessarily been through committees, but some direct information. I have chosen this month to begin with this by asking some of our colleagues to give very brief reports regarding some issues arising out of admissions to the university. I think if we are to make decisions and to be involved in the decisions of the schools we need to be sure that we are well educated on some of the effects of these decisions and some of the issues that arise. To begin I have asked Dean Peter Sederberg of the Honors College to speak with us briefly in a reprise of a report that he did for the Board of Trustees regarding yield rates that the Honors College has encountered related to scholarship money. I think it has some information that we will find interesting in terms of the quality of students that we are attracting to the college.

DEAN PETER SEDERBERG - Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a hand-out. I want to notify people the notes that I have here are different from the ones that I used this noon to discuss terrorism.

I will wait for this to circulate. I want to add a very important caveat to this. It is very hard to draw a firm trend line based on essentially two data points. At least I do have two data points rather than one. I think it is easier with two than one. But it was troubling enough that I have shared this information with the Provost and the President and the Board of Trustees and I have shared it with the Council of Academic Deans and now I am sharing it with you as information - as a possible problem. I think it has been building for some years and it is probably going to get worse given our financial crisis.

The handout that I have passed out - on one side is the growth of the Honors College and the numerical indicators of quality student body for whatever they are worth in terms of their academic grade point average and SAT's scores. You will notice that following the objectives of Dr. Palms' we have increased the size of the Honors College from essentially 700 students in early 1990's over a thousand now and increasing the size of the incoming class from 150 to 175 back in the early 1990's to 250 plus or minus ten in 2001. The first year that we admitted a class of 250 or more was 1997. You will see for a number of years we tracked steadily upward both in terms of qualitative and the quantitative indicators. This year we have a bit of a reverse. I do not want to exaggerate the significance of this reverse because it actually puts us in the mid-point of those five years. But that is what caught my attention.

On the other side is some comparison between the fall of 2000--which is the finest class that we have ever attracted again not, in terms of size; it was not the very largest, but in terms of quality--and fall 2001. You will see indications of yield of accepted to the college and actually enrolled. Again the interpretations of this data are difficult because you really need more data. I will say what I did not include here, and I am going to try to fill in what was the yield rate for the initial accepted core, in other words, the students who were not admitted off our wait list. This comparison makes the figures somewhat more dramatic.

In the fall of 2000 our initial accepted cohort excluding the wait list was 527 students. We enrolled 248 of those for a yield rate of over 47%. This year, fall of 2001, our initial cohort was 523. There were more out-of-state students which is part of the issue here. Only 216 of those were enrolled for a yield rate of 41.3%. If you go across, you will see that in South Carolina residents we have a slight decline in overall yield rate but if you back out the wait listed students the initially admitted cohort in 2001 was 294 not 317 students of whom 147 enrolled - a 50% yield rate down from 54.8% in 2000.

Now here's where I am not sure, this is only one year, and I have been in this enrollment management racket long enough to know that there are fluctuations, especially with our in-state class. It does seem that some years there is a very good senior class across the state and some years it is not quite as good. It is basically fixed in size. In other words, we have a fixed pool. As Dr. Palms indicated we are getting a fairly good chunk of the fixed pool of Honors caliber students. Over the longer term there will be more of these students as our secondary school system improves. But from year to year you are not going to see a major jump except for these odd fluctuations.

Last year, the class that graduated in 2000, from the state high schools, the reports from the Admissions officers who go all over the state, was that guidance counselor; were saying this is the best class in memory. But the class that graduated in 2001, the one that we recruited this year, they did not get that kind of praise. It's not that they were awful, it's just that the previous year stood out. This may simply be that kind of random fluctuation. The scuttlebutt that I am picking up so far is that this class, the class that will graduate in 2002, is going to be better again over all. We'll see.

Far more dramatically troubling is what happened with our non-state applicants yield rate. As you know we have a McNair Scholars Program. The McNair Scholars Program was fully implemented this year in that we admitted a total of 20 McNair Scholars plus 6 McNair finalists out of a finalist pool total of 40. 26 out of 40. That is a tremendous yield rate for the McNair Program. If you look at the very last table on the bottom of the page, non-S.C. residents who were not McNairs or McNair finalists, what you will notice is that the yield rate there dropped over 6%. That's more, we have an ironic tribute to the success of our Office of Admissions in that if you will look at our eligible admitted pool it went up from overall from 192 to 230 students in one year -

out-of-state. Because of this tremendous push over the last four years, we have attracted more applicants from all over the country to the University of South Carolina. But we had a falling off - a dramatic falling off in the scholarships we provided to those just below McNair finalist quality.

What happened is that for the class of 2000, those who entered in 2000, we were able to offer a supplemental scholarship to these students usually amounting between $2500 to $3500 on top of the $1500 University Scholars award that they received automatically just because of their GPA and SAT, providing a five thousand dollar scholarship which at that time in 2000 would basically be an out-of-state tuition scholarship for these students. This year we basically offered these students a $1500 scholarship at a time when our out-of-state scholars tuition rose to $6000. I think that that's the most troubling figure from this report. Next year that figure will only get worse.

To be competitive for that cohort of very fine students, whom we are attracting for the very first time in the history of our institution to apply to the University of South Carolina, we need to offer them essentially a tuition scholarship and next year that will probably be between $6500 and $7000. This then was the conundrum shared with the

before mentioned groups and individuals. How can we do this? If we are unable to do this, then it is--either in-state--we have to recruit in-state more effectively or perhaps look for a slippage in the quality of our class, or possibly reduce the size of the class, which also would solve, to some extent, the scholarship program's problems. I will take questions on that.

PROFESSOR EZRA GREENSPAN - ENGL - I am not sure this is a question as much as an observation. I'm concerned - I have had two children in attendance the last two years at the South Carolina Governors School for Science and Math and this year I am the president of the parents association there. There was a remarkable turn of events last year when for the first time almost as many GSSM students chose to go to the College of Charleston as to USC. I suspect that that may be a trend. I am also concerned from loose talk I have heard in the dormitory among these extraordinary bright students that USC may not be the place for them. They read the newspapers. They hear the skuttlebutt. I am frankly concerned. I am concerned about that in exactly the same way that I am concerned as a faculty member in trying to recruit faculty from around the country. Folks read, folks hear and they are going to make calculations. Again I agree one doesn't take one year as the basis of a long term trend but I do think that at that specific level we may be facing serious problems.

DEAN SEDERBERG - That is a very important specific level though- the Governor's School. I can't explain why they would choose the College of Charleston. Of course, the College of Charleston is in the same fiscal boat as we are. I guess the one silver lining to a national recession is that institutions all around the country will be in the same boat we are. We won't be swimming alone in a swamp situation. But that's hardly any reason to remain sanguine about the trends. We put a great deal of effort on recruitment from the Governor's School. We have the last six years. We used to get between 6 and 9 students a year. We now routinely get between 14 and 18. One year we actually recruited 1/3 of the class. I believe that was in 1997 or 1998. There are fluctuations. I would concur though that the very best students from their school may begin to look more to leave the state if they can get sufficient financial support, if they feel our state is abandoning higher education. So I think that is certainly something to keep in mind.

PROFESSOR JERALD WALLULIS - PHIL - I believe that there may be some interest in increasing the size of the Honors College. Given the data you have presented, I take that this might not be the best strategy to use now. Is that a correct understanding of your presentation?

DEAN SEDERBERG - Yes. I think that if we looked at the data that we had in the year 2000 we could be cautiously optimistic, pre-fiscal constraints that we could increase the size of the Honors College by 25 students. With this data and the fiscal constraints I don't think you can be as optimistic.

CHAIR WILCOX - Thank you, Dr. Sederberg, for that update. I have also asked Professor Steve Lynn who is the interim chair of the English Department to share with us the impact of the increased freshmen class enrollment on English 101 and 102 courses.

That would be a good snapshot of the impact on the larger freshmen courses.

PROFESSOR STEVE LYNN - ENGL - I would like to introduce Bill Rivers and he is the director of first year English and you can direct all the difficult questions to Bill.

I have a handout also.

PROFESSOR LYNN - We have 662 more students in first year English classes. How did we deal with that? We increased the enrollment caps to 25. The National Council of Teachers of English says we should have no more than 22 in writing intensive courses, and we have been at or slightly above that up until a few years ago. We also added 21 more 101 classes and 2 more 102 classes this fall. How were we able to do that? We hired many more adjunct instructors, 18 versus 6 last year. There is a downside obviously to hiring adjunct faculty. We get the best adjuncts that we can. But they don't have the same intensive training that our teaching assistants have. For example, a teaching assistant will be observed in the classroom 8 times over the course of a year, including peer observations. They get a good deal more feedback in their paper grading than adjunct staff. We also moved people out of the Writing Center and Writing Studio into the classroom. We haven't really seen a tremendous effect from that but as the semester goes on and students scramble to get appointments in the Writing Center, they will book up and there will be a longer waiting period. We also reduced the research assistants for the faculty. Graduate students don't get to work with them and the faculty loses the benefit of working of having graduate students to help them. We also moved some faculty into the classroom. Any questions?

CHAIR WILCOX - Thank you very much. Again I thought it would be helpful to get that snapshot because I think there have been questions raised from time to time by the faculty. Certainly I understand the benefits, the income that we get, from the increased enrollment. Questions have been raised about the hidden cost in terms of the program and I hope this information is helpful to you in answering questions. I think they are questions that we need to address. It's not just the English Department, but the Business School, Psychology, and Journalism School and other places are seeing the impact to this enrollment. So this is one example, to the extent that it raises questions. I think it would be very helpful to direct those questions to Jim Byrnes who is chair of the Admissions Committee of the faculty. If there is more information that we need to bring back to you we would be happy to do so. I thank both of you for coming today. It has been informative for the Senate.

IV. Reports of Committees.

A. Faculty Senate Steering Committee, Professor Sarah Wise:

PROFESSOR WISE - One of the nominees for the Board of Governors of the Faculty Club withdrew. Carl Boger is elected to that committee for a three-year term.

Today we have nominations for a one-year term on the Curricula and Courses Committee and the Intellectual Properties Committee. The Steering Committee places in nomination for Curricula and Courses - Terry Smith from Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance and for the Intellectual Properties Committee, Ezra Greenspan in the English Department. Nominations are open for these two committees and will remain open during the meeting.

CHAIR WILCOX - The Intellectual Properties Committee is a two-year appointment and if you check the minutes of the last meeting we had nominated someone that we believed was willing to serve but he has declined to serve. That is why this position is reopened at this time. Are there any additional nominations at this time? If not we will leave the nominations open. Prior to adjournment we will ask again for any new nominations.

B. Curricula and Courses Committee, Professor Jeff Persels, Chair:

PROFESSOR PERSELS - We have a rather short agenda this time. I just want to say thanks to the efforts of Sean Crymble who maintains the Faculty Senate homepage

and Keith Long, we now have the forms for Curricula and Courses on the web

attached to the Faculty Senate page in PDS interactive format. We hope this web format

will make it easier to use and we are talking about making online submission of curricula and courses forms.

On page 14, I would like to move item I. The Darla Moore School of Business - a change in title and description of MGSC 590 .

CHAIR WILCOX - The committee has moved Roman numeral I. the change in title and description from the Darla Moore School of Business. Any discussion? All in favor.

All opposed. It is approved.

PROFESSOR PERSELS - Roman numeral II, the College of Education - a deletion of EDIT 651 and a change in description for EDEC 610 and EDEC 540 - a change in title and description.

CHAIR WILCOX - We have in the College of Education a course deletion and a change in description of a course and change in title and description of another course.

Any discussion of those? All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed - no. It is approved.

PROFESSOR PERSELS -In Roman number III. College of Engineering and Information Technology there is just one editorial change on page 16, EMCH 586 Experimental Stress Analysis (3) (Prereq: EMCH 260 or equivalent should be added in there.

CHAIR WILCOX - That is in 586 is that correct? With that one change to approval of prerequisites for various courses in the College of Engineering and Information Technology. Any discussion of those? All in favor say aye. Opposed - no. They are approved.

PROFESSOR PERSELS - Roman number IV. the College of Science and Mathematics

a number of deletions and new courses. There is an editorial change to PHYS 208.

the (Prereq: a grade of C or better in PHYS 207 and MATH 142; coreq: MATH 241)

and there is an amendment further down the change in title and description PHYS 101L and the same for PHYS 102L. Those are two labs that currently read 3 hours. That is an error in the original submission. They both should be 1 hour.

CHAIR WILCOX - We have moved from the College of Science and Mathematics

various new courses and deletions and change in title and description. and also changes in curriculum. Is Professor Jones here from Physics or someone else in Physics. Could you

just explain to the Senate very quickly the purposes of the changes in the curriculum?

UNIDENTIFIED SENATOR FROM PHYSICS - Okay, the course content is pretty much the same 205, 301, 302, 303 are now embodied in courses 206, 207, 208 and PHYS 307 so we have taken a fresh look at the physics curriculum for physics majors and tied the courses more closely together. So it is basically the same courses with some changes in content so that there is a smoother transition from one course to the next.

CHAIR WILCOX - Any further discussion? All in favor of those changes signify by saying aye. Opposed. It is approved. Thank you very much. I appreciate the Physics Department being here. I sort of had this awakening. I tell you the reason I asked them to be here, in addition to our conversations of last semester. When I was at a meeting of the Board, it was being asked to approve a Russian major and it occurred to me that we had voted through the Russian major. At the Board meeting, there was really interesting discussion about why that was being done. But the Senate never had any indication at all. We had just approved it and gone on. So particularly with curriculum changes and the like, if the departments would please be prepared to give a report just simply explaining the purpose of the changes that would be very helpful to us. So we are doing more than just doing course numbers and prerequisites. We will try to adhere to that in the future.

C. Faculty Advisory Committee, Professor Daniel Feldman, Chair:

No report.

D. Faculty Welfare Committee, Professor Peter Graham:

PROFESSOR GRAHAM - Yes, I am substituting for Dan Sabia who could not be because of medical reasons. We on our committee had a number of comments on facility maintenance and Dan has prepared a statement which I shall read to you regarding that issue:

This Senate may recall the effort expended last year by the Welfare Committee to survey faculty attitudes concerning a variety of University issues. You may recall, as well, the finding of that survey that among the most serious of faculty concerns was the condition of the physical plant of the University. Nearly every single faculty member surveyed

Following up on this concern, the Welfare Committee learned last year that probably the major problem regarding maintenance has been the inadequate sums of money budgeted for so

Now, I rehearse this history both to recall our faculty's concern, and to bring to you recent news from this front. About a month ago I received phone calls and an e-mail from several faculty deploring building conditions and custodial services in the Humanities Classroom Building. The Welfare Committee wants me to share with you the ensuing communications that transpired between myself and Mr. Gerald Goings, the Assistant Director of Maintenance Services. I wrote to tell him of the problems reported to me about a failing AC system, broken water fountains, and inoperative elevators, and I told him that I hoped he could address them. Mr. Goings responded promptly by informing me

Let me add that a few days later Mr. Goings reported that $200,000 was found to repair the elevators in the Humanities Building, and for this we thank him and whoever else is responsible. But the fundamental issue remains, and I trust it is obvious what my purpose has been in telling you this one recent story---a story which can be augmented by many others, for instance about deplorable and dangerous conditions in the Library, the Jones Physical Science Center, the Coker Life Science Building, and more. This is a truly serious problem affecting the health and safety of people who work in these buildings, their ability to do their job, and their ability to do their job in decent if not pleasant conditions; and it also affects how this University appears to prospective students and prospective faculty and prospective supporters and other observers and visitors. The Welfare Committee urges the Administration to think of this issue as the faculty do

Thank you for this time.

CHAIR WILCOX - One of the numbers that was given at one of the SDI meetings is that (What is our budget roughly? $170 million a year)--the deferred maintenance estimates are now at $154 million. So you can see the scope of this problem. We are talking of an enormous problem in terms of deferred maintenance. And one of the concerns is that you develop almost an attitude of disposable buildings so that you approve money to renovate or build rather than to maintain what have. I doubt that this is news to any of them, but would the officers in any way like to respond to these concerns at this point? Give us some assurance?

PROVOST ODOM - I cannot give you any assurance, that is the problem. We certainly have discussed this in the SDI committee. One of the things that you will find if you go back several years to what the Future's Committee did in the final analysis over a 3 year period. Every unit on campus, academic and non-academic, was cut 12% and then every unit had the opportunity through a strategic plan to get back up to 6%. So everybody suffered 6%. If you go back and look at those units you will find that most non-academic units suffered a cut of 12%, the maximum cut that they could get. We are seeing the effects of that right now in our deferred maintenance. Another thing that we have to do is go to the State every year if there is going to be a bond bill and we have to ask them to fund any renovations, any new buildings that we get. One of the things that we have done is that we have now started putting aside in the budget money for maintenance of a new building. For example the new Graduate Science Center, we put aside $400,000.00 a year for maintenance of that building. That includes utilities, that includes custodial, that includes anything else that we have to do. Right now it is not costing that much but it will cost that much at some point. The problem that we have with Jones Physical Science Center building is that it is absolutely full of asbestos. Every time we do a renovation of any sort in that building we have to build a tent, we have to bring in special workers, they have to wear special equipment, and it is incredibly expensive just to go up above the ceiling -- in a ceiling tile and do any work whatsoever. We do have some money from an asbestos fund that we will use to start trying to renovate the Jones Science Center but that is only after Geography moves out next spring. We are trying to do some renovations. If you look at McMaster, what has happened there. If you look at Sloan, what has happened there. We are currently working on Callcott College and those renovations are being funded by a bond bill from the State. We will continue to do that. One of the things that we have learned is that the State of Georgia, to try to combat this problem, allocates 1% of its total state budget every year for deferred maintenance at institutions of higher education. We have talked within the administration of trying to push something like that here so we know every year that we are going to have money in the budget for deferred maintenance on our campus. But there are a lot of different effects that are taking place. We are seeing an effect of something that happened several years ago. We do have a $154 million in deferred maintenance right now on this campus that we have to address or should address. The next building that will probably be addressed in terms of renovations is LeConte College because we have been successful in getting some money from the State. We certainly need to address problems at Barnwell College, we need to address problems at Hamilton College, we need to address problems in this building (School of Law). This building has asbestos in it as well. So all of these we have to deal with, we have to try to prioritize and it is very difficult.

CHAIR WILCOX - A piece of information: I met with some of the faculty chairs from other colleges around the State and we will meet again. One of the things that we are talking about is working with our respective institutions and bringing a faculty voice directly to the legislators as best we can. As we were talking about ideas, I will tell you one of the concerns is what are our common interests. We compete against each other to some extent but we also have some very common interests. One of the things we talked about was the buildings and grounds situations that the various colleges face. We feel we are all in very much a similar situation. It is possible that we will be able to put together a program for some of the key legislators. I think that one of the ways of addressing that is to try to work in a tough budget year--it is going to be hard--but to work to bring in some more money for this program. The other thing I hope we can do is, to the extent that we can, prioritize some of these things for the University and say "Look this is a real problem this is affecting health safety, the ability to teach students--to be assured that the administration is aware of the problems. I suspect they have no shortage of input on this subject from our colleagues, but one thing we can do is at least try and prioritize with the University how to spend the funds we do get. Though obviously it is an insufficient amount by far. Thank you.

ROBERT WILCOX - The Budget Committee, I don't believe Al Leitch is here. A lot of their work is being done this year by the SDI committee. But the one thing you should be aware of, I don't think it is any great secret, one of the concerns that everyone has is the potential of a mid-year budget cut. The numbers being banded around--some were greater than 2%, some were less than 4%--but a mid-year cut is going to be painful if it occurs. We will not know for a couple of weeks and we may not know then. The first quarter of the State budget ended September 30 and they are waiting to get that information in. But, as you can understand, that will not take into account the effects of things that have happened in September - only a couple of weeks of that or since September 11. So it won't be surprising to see the State Budget and Control people also being very nervous about what the second quarter is going to bring regardless of what the first quarter shows them. So there is very serious concern of the potential for that being discussed. In addition there is concern about next year's budget, as well, perhaps bringing an additional cut. It emphasizes the need of the efforts such as what SDI is doing to try and figure out how we can manage these in a strategic manner rather than across the board whacks. And, one of things that is going to be important this year is the timing, if a mid-year cut comes, what will be the timing in relation to the work that the Provost's committee is doing. I can tell you the Budget Committee talked about various proposals. Obviously the solutions to these problems are two fold. You increase revenue, i.e. tuition, or you cut costs. You and I start looking at things we can't do, and people we can't hire or whatever. None of the recommendations are very desirable. There is nothing that we've put on the table that everybody said, "Ah, that's the cure." Everything we've put on the table somebody would say, "Well there is a problem there." And we would all agree, that is not a very good solution. So it is going to be a very tough year if the dire predictions do in fact come true. The Budget Committee will continue to meet and discuss these things. Though, as I say, much of this is going to depend on the outcome of the SDI effort.

V. New Business or Old Business.

None.

VI. Report of Secretary.

CHAIR WILCOX - Are there any additional nominations for the two committee vacancies? If not, those elections will be deemed to have occurred.

SECRETARY WISE - Is the sign up sheet circulating?

CHAIR WILCOX - Is the sign up sheet circulating for attendance? Has it gotten by? Where are the sign up sheets? Anybody have a sign up sheet in their hand? Okay if we can pass one over here and Greg if you could pass one to your right. Be sure you get that signed before we leave please.

VII. Good of the Order.

PROFESSOR PHILIP ROLLINSON (ENGL) - Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have just a comment. It is going to include a suggestion that will work for the good of the order. I was not at the September meeting. I am sorry I wasn't. I was enlisted by my department and am now here. I have been in this group before. I was really impressed by your comments Mr. Chairman about faculty governance in the September meeting and I refer to a comment, "If we are to continue to claim the traditions of faculty governance,...." And it seems to me (I've been here 30 years) that we are not doing very well with faculty governance because of primarily that we have left the governance of the University slide and slide to a cancer that is bureaucrats. When I came here, exactly 30 years ago in the English Department. We had one Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences whose name was Nelson. He went off to the University of Virginia, wisely, a few years later or unwisely. But we had one dean and I remember he had one secretary. His office was in the Humanities Building where the Chair of the English Department is now. He had one secretary and two work study assistants. That was in 1971. Now there are at least two colleges that have deans, associate deans, assistant deans, assistants to the bloody assistants, associates to the assistants. We have created in this University, since I've been here, new offices with defending minorities which is wonderful. We are defending the sexes, we are defending everyone. Mr.Gist has an office bigger than some of the departments in my college which is fine. But what has happened is we have fallen into this, as one of my colleagues told me, a manager style government. The administration or bureaucrats or the managers, and the faculty (that's us) we are the supplier service - the server supplies. And, our students are clients and customers. I have been in this body before and what happens in this body is largely we hear reports from people like: Reports of Officers. We had it today they were mercifully very brief today and that is wonderful. I did not realize that the President of the University was an officer of this body. So we sit here and we listen to a dog and pony show. We vote on changing a few course requirements, a few grade changes and that is all we do. And, I have a solution to our problem, I am going to bring it as a resolution to the meeting, Mr. Chairman, next month. The resolution to our budget problem is that every non-essential administrator, bureaucrat resign. Let us have just one dean of each college, shall we? Okay give them a couple secretaries. Drop every associate provost, assistant associate provost, vice-president's assistant to the vice-president - drop all of these people (and many of them have academic affiliations because of course they are scared of being fired anyway so they still have tenured positions in various departments) let them return to their first love. And, they can help us teach, my department doesn't have enough teachers as Professor Lynn was saying, and then we will have this wonderful win win solution. We get rid of these parasites and they come back and help us teach. Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you all.

CHAIR WILCOX - Thank you Professor Rollinson. One of the things that I have urged is that this body does not have enough frank discussion among its members.

PROFESSOR ROLLINSON - I'll be back next month.

CHAIR WILCOX - We look forward to it. Any additional comments for the good of the order?

VIII. Announcements.

None.

CHAIR WILCOX - Thus is there a motion to adjourn. Barring any objection, wait we do have an objection. Yes, excuse me I'm sorry. I did promise an opportunity to the students. Please come forward. The students asked a moment to speak about the blood drive, I guess it is, that is coming up. I apologize for leaving off. Come forward.

LARA BRATCHER - I apologize for prolonging your meeting. I promise to be very very short. Should I come up there or just do it from here? I want to make sure every one can here me.

CHAIR WILCOX - Come up here.

LARA BRATCHER - Good afternoon Faculty Senate. My name is Lara Bratcher and I am the assistant director for the Carolina/Clemson Blood Drive this year. And, I have come today to ask for your help supporting it. We as a committee came up with some ideas in case you wanted some for helping us.

The list is:

1. You can donate blood yourselves. That would be a wonderful example for your students.

This year especially we have a great opportunity to help those in our country who are in desperate need of blood not only in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. And, we can support USC while doing this at the same time. Our committee is hard at work making this the biggest and best blood drive that we have ever had. We've instituted a lot of changes to make it more efficient, more organized. And, we would appreciate any help you can give us. Thank you very much for your time and have a good day.

CHAIR WILCOX - The corollary to that is you could offer that they could go give blood voluntarily or you can extract it from them in the classroom. There has been a motion to adjourn. I assume there is no more objection to adjourning. Thus we will stand adjourned until November 7th.

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